Damn it, why did she have to be right all the time? “Then let him escape. We’ll find a way to catch him when I’m steadier on my feet.”
“But this could be our only chance to identify Sam’s killer. You needn’t worry I’ll try anything heroic. At the first hint of anything suspicious, I promise I’ll scream the house down.”
I didn’t like it, but I knew arguing with Barbara was like arguing with a brick wall. Besides, she had a point. Our quarry was a blackmailer, a Peeping Tom and a murderer—in short, a danger to everyone around him, Barbara and her family in particular. The sooner we caught the villain, the better.
I sighed. “Take the light, and be sure to make plenty of noise so you don’t stumble into him by accident. Give all the doorways and alcoves you pass a wide berth, to avoid being taken by surprise.”
Undaunted, she picked up the candle. “I’ll be back in two shakes.”
She hurried off with a swish of her nightclothes, leaving me alone to imagine every possible danger and berate myself for having swooned like a schoolgirl when I should have gone in her stead. I reached up and touched the back of my head. My hair was stiff with dried blood, and I had a lump the size of a goose egg.
Sometimes I wished Barbara weren’t so cursed fearless. Between the kisses we’d shared and her admission tonight that winning didn’t come as easily to her as it appeared—a startling show of vulnerability, considering she managed to outdo me at every turn—I’d begun to feel oddly protective of her.
Protective of her, and completely unbalanced. I wasn’t usually one to let lust get the better of my reason, and I’d been well aware how foolish it was to kiss a gently reared young lady alone in her bedroom, yet I’d done it anyway. Even a knee in the bollocks hadn’t deterred me. I’d started that silly wrestling game too. What was happening to my good sense?
Finally—it seemed an eternity, though strictly speaking she’d probably been gone only three or four minutes—Barbara returned. And, bless her, she came stomping in, holding the candle at arm’s length, following my advice to the letter. Unless Sam’s killer was both deaf and blind, she couldn’t possibly have stumbled on him by accident.
“What happened?” I asked as soon as she’d pulled the door closed silently behind her.
She joined me on the floor, kneeling with her feet tucked under her. “It appears our Peeping Tom took to the street. I found the front door standing wide open.”
“Did anyone else see him?”
She shook her head. “The footman must be making his midnight rounds just now, for he wasn’t at his post, and the sound of one man fleeing the house apparently wasn’t loud enough to rouse the other servants. My father heard me roaming about and glanced out of his study, but he was only hoping I was Helen and Mama coming home from the theater. In short, no one saw or heard our Peeping Tom.”
“Don’t call him our Peeping Tom. I’d like to wring the devil’s neck.” And that was putting it mildly.
Barbara sighed. “Of all the luck! If only he’d hit you just a few minutes earlier or a few minutes later, Frye would have been at his post beside the front door, and we might have caught Sam’s killer.”
I cast a damping look at her. “Next time, I’ll schedule my concussion more conveniently.”
She stifled a giggle—it was rather gratifying to coax a giggle from no-nonsense Barbara Jeffords—and rose to her feet. Candle in hand, she slowly walked the length of the wall I was leaning against. At almost the halfway point, an oil painting of a partridge had been removed from its hook and set on the floor. She stopped and ran her hand over a defect in the plaster there.
“Here’s the peephole. On my side of the wall, the pattern of the wallpaper obscures it, and on this side, that painting must have concealed the opening when it wasn’t in use. I wonder how long it’s been here?” She frowned, evidently reflecting on all the times she’d been alone in her room and all the things a silent watcher might have seen.
At least, I assumed that was what she was thinking, for it was certainly on my mind. Someone had been observing her through that peephole, watching her brush that shining red hair, seeing her undress and perhaps even bathe, ogling those full breasts and long shapely legs, watching her sleep at night. Who knew what kind of perverse pleasure he’d taken in spying on her? It was enough to make my blood boil.
“Who would want to peep at me?” she mused in a small voice.
Every red-blooded male in Christendom. I climbed cautiously to my feet, relieved to find the dizziness had abated, and came to stand beside her. “A man, obviously.” I examined the peephole with her. “And one who knows how to get in and out of the house. Or someone already living here...?”
“A servant or a member of the family? But all the servants have been with us for years. As for my family, I hope you don’t mean to imply one of them would spy on me through a peephole.”
I shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”
She answered primly, “My brother Rowland is married with his own establishment, my brother Will is currently staying with friends in the country, and my brother Edmund is away at school. It couldn’t be any of them. Besides, none of the servants and no one in my family has a name beginning with M.”
I reached up to finger the peephole. “Whoever he is, he’s at least six feet tall. You’d have to stretch to reach this opening on tiptoe, but it’s almost at my eye level.”
She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Your cousin Mr. Mainsforth is about six feet tall. He appears to know the house too. Remember how he told Helen to meet him in the butler’s pantry?”
“Don’t start that again.” I stooped to lift the oil painting by its frame, restoring it to its place on the wall. “Lots of men are that height. Teddy, for instance, as well as my uncle Daventry and my father.”
“I think we can safely rule out your father.”
I stepped back with a frown.
“Oh!” Barbara’s hand flew to her mouth. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I only meant your father has never been in this house, not that he would have no interest in peeping at a—”
I cut her off with a peremptory glare. “It doesn’t matter.”
Most people would have had the good sense to drop it, but not Barbara. “From the look on your face, I’d say it matters to you. If I’d really meant to insult your father, I could have found a cleverer way to do it than absolving him of peeping at me. And you needn’t be so sensitive. I met him once, you know, and he seemed perfectly unexceptionable.”
“Yes, he seemed that way,” I echoed, catching the slur.
Her slim brows drew together. “I wasn’t being snide. Honestly, a person can’t even say something nice about your family without your taking it the wrong way.”
But I’d been called too many names and suffered too many sneers to apologize for my reaction. I turned away. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Naturally, Barbara considered it an utter impossibility she could fail to understand anything. “I grant you there’ve been some unseemly rumors about your father, but who can say whether they’re true or not? And even if they should be, it’s no reflection on you.”
If she’d chosen her words precisely to make me lose my temper, she couldn’t have done better. “In the first place,” I said, wheeling on her, “you haven’t the slightest notion what you’re talking about. I can say whether the rumors are true or not, and so can my mother, and so can any number of other people. There’s no point in pretending otherwise, is that clear? And as for my father’s reputation being no reflection on me, that’s either the most naive thing I’ve ever heard you say, or the most dishonest. It’s been reflecting on me for almost as long as I can remember.”
The startled look on her face told me I’d gone too far. But I was angry, and my head was pounding, and how was my father any of her business anyway? I’d hoped she’d begun to feel at least a grudging respect for me, and it turned out she’d had the sodomy rumors on her mind all along. If she were a
man, I’d have made her eat her words by now.
She recovered quickly. “I’ll overlook your tone, but only because you just suffered a blow to the head and you’re not in your right mind.”
“Don’t do me any favors. I’m clear-headed enough.”
She stared for a moment in what looked like dismay before drawing herself up with icy dignity. “In that case, there’s no need for you to stay another minute, is there?”
“Thank God for that.” Anger gripped me anew at the way I’d been kneed in the groin, bashed on the head, and was now being coolly insulted. “I can’t remember when I’ve suffered through a more disagreeable evening.”
Too late, I remembered the intoxication of kissing her—her breathless response, the feel of my tongue in her mouth, the yielding softness of her breast against my hand. Of course I hadn’t meant any of that was disagreeable. If anything, I’d been speaking out of a frustration born of having something so good cut achingly short.
Before I could issue a retraction, her eyes flashed. “Is that so?” she demanded, so affronted she’d gone completely white. “In that case, you’ll be relieved to know you’re not the only one who considered that little grappling match on my bed a sad disappointment. I thought you had some experience with women. You certainly don’t kiss as if you do.”
I flushed. “As if you’re an expert.”
“I know a hawk from a handsaw.” She brushed grandly past me to take up a post by the door. “It’s time you were going.”
Tight-lipped and furious, I stalked out. She followed with the candle. It was now officially one of the worst nights of my life. Not only was Barbara about to eject me from the house, but I had no notion who’d hit me or if he posed an imminent threat to her. Not to mention that the first time I’d kissed a girl who didn’t earn her keep as one of the fashionable impure—a respectable female, an actual lady—she’d loathed the whole experience. It made being kneed in the groin seem like a fond memory.
“You haven’t said what you mean to do about John and the notebook,” I reminded her as we started down the stairs.
“I haven’t decided yet. I suppose you’ll just have to read about it in the papers.”
“Or perhaps I’ll read instead that Sam’s killer slaughtered you in your sleep,” I said, aiming for the nastiest thing I could possibly say, and then wishing I hadn’t actually said it.
“If that happens, it will be the only noteworthy thing to happen in my bed since—”
I froze at the same moment she did. Her father was standing at the foot of the stairs, glaring up at me as Barbara followed in her bloodstained nightclothes.
Chapter Eleven
Barbara
“You damned scoundrel!” my father roared at Ben, so angry his voice shook. “How dare you sneak in here and make free with my daughter!”
Ben began levelly. “I know how this must look, sir, but—”
Papa cut him off, his face livid. “You think you’re the cock of the walk, don’t you? Strutting about here as if you own the place. Well, I won’t have it. You can’t accuse my Helen of impropriety one day and then throw your leg over her sister the next!”
“Papa!” I gasped in shock.
Ben began again. “I assure you, Lord Leonard—”
Though I was behind him on the stairs and couldn’t see his face, the strain in his voice made it clear he was determined to impose some measure of calm on the scene.
Unfortunately, Papa would have none of it. “Don’t you assure me of anything! No doubt you thought you could pull the wool over my eyes, creeping about here on cat’s feet. Well, I’m not so easily fooled. I thought I heard someone up there with Barbara.” He stabbed an accusing finger in my direction. “And you! Just you wait until I get you alone, miss. You’re a disgrace to this family.”
“Papa, it isn’t what you think. Lord Beningbrough came here on behalf of his cousin, and he was only upstairs just now because—”
“I came to see Lady Barbara,” Ben said flatly, putting the lie to every word I’d just said, “and she’s completely innocent in this. She had no notion I would call here tonight, and she’s already ordered me out of the house. I can assure you on my honor as a gentleman, I’ve given you no cause to fear for her virtue.”
Papa’s face was purple. “You’re damned right you’ve given me no cause! I wouldn’t take your word if it was tied up in silver ribbons, but you’ll make an honest woman of her, that’s what you’ll do.”
“No,” I said, squeezing past Ben to face my father from the bottom of the staircase. “He will not! I don’t want to marry him any more than he wants to marry me.” I was ready to sink from shame and humiliation. What if Ben thought I’d engineered this entire scene expressly to force him into an offer?
Papa glowered at me. “This is none of your affair, Barbara.”
“Of course it’s my affair! You call him a liar with one breath, and with the next order us to wed?” Groping for an argument that might actually carry weight with him, I rushed on. “Just this evening, you said over dinner you wouldn’t allow one of us to marry him, because of what his father is. And nothing happened, Papa. If you would only calm down and let him leave quietly—”
Behind me now, Ben said frostily, “I quite agree with Lady Barbara. I know the duty due my position and my family, and it doesn’t include marrying your daughter simply because you refuse to accept my word I haven’t ruined her.”
I turned and cast an agonized glance at Ben—agonized both because it hurt to hear him starkly rejecting me out of hand, and because there was something painfully ironic in finally having someone stand up to my father on my behalf, only to have him sound colder and more disdainful than Papa ever had.
But perhaps Ben assumed this had been my plan all along—to ensnare him in a compromising scene. I could still remember his scornful pronouncement the first time we met. Young ladies often pretend they’ve no interest in matrimony, simply to lure a bachelor into letting down his guard.
My father brushed me aside and took a threatening step up the stairs toward Ben. “You damned puppy! I ought to thrash you within an inch of your life.”
Ben didn’t even blink. “I shouldn’t advise you to try, Lord Leonard. You would excessively regret the attempt.”
The cool certainty in Ben’s voice sent a chill through me. My father was no featherweight, but neither was he any match for a Corinthian like Ben. “Papa, please just let him leave.”
He turned to glare down at me. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, miss? I blame your mother’s family. Since your grandmother Merton left you that money, you’ve been completely ungovernable. Did you think you could smuggle a lover into the house and I’d just allow him to go merrily on his way?”
“He isn’t my lov—”
“Is anything amiss, my lord?” came a voice from just behind us.
I spun around with mingled humiliation and gratitude to find Frye, back from his rounds, standing at the bottom of the stairs with a candle in his hand. Thank heavens someone had arrived to put an end to this dreadful ordeal. I gathered my wrapper tighter about me, shrinking further into the shadows so the bloodstains on my nightclothes wouldn’t be apparent.
“Nothing’s amiss,” Ben answered for my father. “I was just leaving.”
Papa looked ready to explode, but what could he do? Announcing my disgrace to a servant would hardly improve matters. “What a shame you should have to go just now, Beningbrough.” His tone was menacing, and he kept his eyes fixed unwaveringly on Ben. “We’ll speak more of this soon, I promise you.”
“If you insist.” Ben sketched a stiff, barely perceptible bow, then stalked past me toward the front door.
“Good night, Lord Beningbrough,” I called after him miserably, the words both a show of compulsory politeness for Frye’s sake and a desperate plea for Ben’s understanding. No one could be more appalled than I was by my father’s low opinion of my virtue, or his insistence Ben owed me an offer of marriage.
<
br /> To my dismay, however, Ben gave no sign of faith in my innocence. He stormed out without another word, or even so much as a backward glance.
Ben
Striding home, I almost wished footpads would attack me. At least then I’d have someone to hit.
I was so angry I could hardly see straight. So the Jeffords had decided over dinner I wasn’t good enough to marry into their precious family, had they? Amiable, slow-witted Teddy was accounted a desirable match, but they regarded me—the heir to a dukedom—as a mésalliance even for the sharp-tongued, nailed-to-the-shelf older daughter of the house.
Not that I’d intended to offer for Barbara. Not by a long shot. Admittedly, the possibility had flitted through my brain as we’d kissed, but it had been only a passing fancy and not a notion I’d entertained in any seriousness. What fellow wasn’t prone to wild ideas when he had a soft, yielding, beautiful woman in his arms? I’d only had to come back down to earth to remember how perfectly cutting and contemptuous she could be.
I wished I’d never gone to see her. I could’ve simply written out a reply to Barbara’s note, but inexplicably I’d got a maggot in my brain to discuss her suspicions with her in person. Even when I’d seen she was dressed for bed, I hadn’t had the good sense to head home. I’d started a wrestling match with her, I’d kissed her, I’d even bled on her—in short, I’d thrown all sense of caution and good sense to the wind. No wonder Lord Leonard had jumped to the wrong conclusion the instant he spotted us together.
Meanwhile I’d learned nothing useful about Sam Garvey’s death except that the killer was my cousin John’s height and he’d been peeping at Barbara. Somehow that last detail only added insult to injury. While I’d been kneed in the bollocks and discounted as potential marriage material, some felon had been watching her take off her clothes.
Well, I was washing my hands of the whole business. Let Lord Leonard get to the bottom of the blackmail and the break-ins and the attacks, if he was so good at catching strangers in his house. So far all I’d succeeded in doing was making my head hurt. Twice.
Alyssa Everett Page 12
